Cellular networks are primarily designed to carry voice traffic. Typical voice calls last for a short duration. Therefore, cellular networks are able to accommodate a large number of customers making voice calls. Cellular networks, however, are now being used increasingly for data traffic. Data traffic has a tendency to use network resources for long periods of time, which may effectively use resources originally intended for handling voice traffic. As a result, telecommunication service providers face increasing demands to accommodate both voice and data traffic over cellular networks.
Telecommunication service providers now offer customers, such as mobile users, services that provide Internet access over cellular networks designed to support data traffic. The use of the cellular networks to support high speed data traffic requires considerable overhead to maximize resource utilization. As a result of the increasing volume of data traffic, the overhead required to manage the traffic has greatly increased for telecommunication service providers.